25 Big Ideas For 2012: Ubiquitous Face Recognition

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25 Big Ideas For 2012: Ubiquitous Face Recognition

Face recognition is now ubiquitous. In June, Facebook rolled out its "Tag Suggest" system, which recognizes pictures of users' friends as they are uploaded; face.com claims it has scanned 25 billion images; and Google (which uses face recognition in its Picasa photo-management system) says that, once it gets the legals figured out, Google Goggles will be used to identify members of the public by pointing your smartphone at them. Rioters in Canada and the UK have been identified using the technology, and at the 2014 Fifa World Cup, Brazilian police will use face-scanning glasses to automatically identify "persons of interest" at matches.

There are concerns over mission creep. "Recognizing people in photographs works well," says BT's chief security technology officer Bruce Schneier. "But attempts to pick terrorists out of crowds have failed, resulting in systems that do a great job surveilling innocents and a terrible job identifying the guilty." Say cheese...